Luke 1:39-45 The Spirit Speaks
Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter one, verse 39, page 856 in the pew Bibles.
Last week we left Mary having just been visited by the angel Gabriel who told her the good news that she would bear a Son by the Holy Spirit. He also told her that her relative Elizabeth in her old age had also conceived a son and was in her sixth month even though she was previously barren.
So Mary traveled from Nazareth to see her relative Elizabeth and that is where we will pick up in verse 39.
39 In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, 40 and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, 42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Let’s pray.
I’m inclined to think that the Holy Spirit conceived the Lord Jesus in Mary’s womb right in the middle of verse 38: And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
It’s not really that important to have an opinion on this but I think that when Mary said, “Behold I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” it happened according to his word and then the angel departed from her.
Regardless of your opinion on the subject, within the next few days she went from Nazareth to a village in the hill country of Judah. And like most details in Scripture, there is some debate among the scholars of whether Luke , rather uncharacteristically, didn’t name the village in the hill country of Judah or if he actually meant the village in the hill country called Jutta.
There was, and still is, a village called Jutta in the hill country of Judah that was one of the cities of the Levites described in the Old Testament. Is this detail important? Maybe not, but at least allow, this detail to inform you that there is a lot of detail that we can learn in and about Scripture that may not necessarily be on the surface but that can definitely deepen our understanding of Scripture if we will just take the opportunity to look.
So, regardless of the name of the town that Zechariah and Elizabeth lived in in Judah, Mary went with haste to visit Elizabeth.
Now, just by way of reminder, Mary didn’t have email. She didn’t have Facebook. No phone, no texts, no way of letting Elizabeth know, in that short span of time, what had happened to her and that she should expect a visit from her in a few days.
Mary traveled on foot the roughly 60-70 miles from Nazareth to see her relative Elizabeth.
And when she arrived, Mary greeted Elizabeth, and that’s when things get interesting.
39 In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, 40 and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb.
Who’s the baby that Elizabeth is carrying? John the Baptist. Remember what the angel Gabriel said about him back in verse 15, …he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.
Now I want to be clear, for the four hundred years prior to this, it’s not that the Lord was not active, He kept the planet spinning and He kept people’s hearts beating and their atoms from flying apart. What He hadn’t done was spoken through a prophet. This encounter was taking place at the end of four hundred years of prophetic silence.
Throughout the Old Testament the Lord spoke to His people through the mouths of prophets who were filled with the Holy Spirit, but they were only filled temporarily. It wasn’t until the Day of Pentecost that the Holy Spirit fell on all the believers in Jesus and dwelt within them. Before that day the Holy Spirit only filled people for specific tasks at specific times, except for John the Baptist.
So four hundred years of prophetic silence were finally ended with little unborn baby John the Baptist, full of the Spirit, jumping for joy in his mother’s womb at the arrival of Messiah. Microscopic Messiah in His own mother’s womb.
But John wasn’t the only one filled with the Spirit that day. Let’s consider Elizabeth’s response.
And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, 42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Isn’t it wonderful that after four hundred years of prophetic silence the first person to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to speak was a woman? I don’t think that’s insignificant.
In fact, Galatians 3:27-28 says: 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
That’s a discussion for another time, but one worth having.
Elizabeth didn’t know that Mary was pregnant, she didn’t know Mary was coming to visit. But the Holy Spirit did and revealed it to her. And since it was the Lord speaking through her it was a beautiful and perfect response to the Lord’s work in Mary’s life, one of blessings, and humility, and joy.
Far too often we respond in our hearts to the blessings in other people’s lives with envy not with sincere praise. We need to be mindful of how we respond to the movement of the Lord on other people’s lives, praising Him for His grace and mercy instead of subtly being jealous.
Elizabeth gives us the second phrase of what would later become the “Hail Mary,” “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”
The word translated, “blessed,” both times, means to be a recipient of God’s favor. This is important to know because our translators used the word blessed here three times in this passage but the Greek words aren’t all the same. The first two “blessed’s” are from the Greek word eulogeo, where we get our word “eulogy” which means “to tell of blessings.” The third, “blessed,” is from the Greek word, makarios, which means “happy.”
So Elizabeth’s response begins with blessings because of God’s favor, not only on Mary but on the world, and that leads to the second theme of her response, humility.
43 And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Through the Holy Spirit it was revealed Elizabeth, and confirmed to Mary, that Mary’s child was the long awaited Messiah.
For six months Elizabeth knew that the Day of the Lord was coming. No doubt Zechariah had filled her in on the details of the angel’s visit and his message, even if he had to do it in writing. But in her humility she didn’t count herself worthy to have the Lord’s mother grace her with her presence.
Again, it’s important to note the details here. When Elizabeth uses the word, “Lord,” she didn’t use a word that would be used of just any human ruler like we hear the words, “my lord,” used on tv and in movies. Elizabeth used the title for God and Christ, she was proclaiming in the Spirit that Mary carried the Messiah and she was humbled by the blessing.
Lastly, both Elizabeth and John responded with joy.
44 For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
There’s our third, “blessed,” only this time the Greek word means, “happy.”
Baby John is jumping for joy, and in her joy Elizabeth declares the joy of she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.
We have a tendency to arrange things into hierarchies, to arrange things in order of our perception of importance. Who is more important in this account, Elizabeth or Mary?
While they should be honored for their service to the Lord and their humble submission to His plan, they aren’t any different.
They were both sinners, they both needed to be redeemed by faith in Jesus Christ.
They were both people that God the Father chose to use to accomplish His purposes in the world.
In that way, they were no different from each other and they are no different than us.
Mary and Elizabeth only had the Word of the Lord to go on, same as us.
Like them, we are all sinners in need of God’s grace and forgiveness that is only available through faith in Jesus Christ, and like them, all we have is the Word of the Lord to go on, but we also get the Spirit of the Lord to guide and empower us to follow the Word and thus follow the Lord.
Amen.
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